[FrogMan]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

One of the biggest problems that I face is where to draw the line between being a parent with a lot of influence in my children's lives and where to be the bread winner and be responsible for our quality of life. My job is unique in that I am not home every day. In fact, I can be gone for days at a time and home again for days at a time. Sometimes, the transition between daddy being home and gone is difficult. My family gets into routines that I screw up by being home, and that is a source for friction.

We live in very fragile financial state. The investment to do what I do was very costly. Not only in terms of lost wages by being a student for 13mo, but also making next to nothing for 2 yrs. Look at it this way, my wife worked a part time job while I worked 2 jobs. In the end, she still made more money than I did. The cost of my training, coupled with the CC debt and money borrowed from family members has put us in a large hole. Think 6 figures plus. About 80% of the debt is off the books, as it is money that I owe my parents, and money that is not in my name. But it is still money owed. Of course, at the time the aviation industry was in a good state, and the expected return on investment was very good compared to comparable industries. Not so much now.

Kids go through this very important development stage up to the age of 3, where they are developing the personality, and mindset that will set the stage for how they develop the rest of thier lives. Cole's three and under years were hard, and it is plain to see the impact that it had on him, and how it affects him today. Basically, his Mom worked up to 3 jobs at a time, and he stayed home with his deadbeat grandma. This was like being on his own essentially, as she didn't pay a whole lot of attention to him.

Anyway, back to the point, my wife and I share the opinion that our family is more important than being financially secure. I need to be home as much as my job will allow, so that I can be the leader, father, and have the impact on my kids lives that I missed out upon as my parents divorced when I was two. Yet, I am the bread winner, it is my problem if we can't pay the bills. It is my problem if our house/duplex is too small for our family. It is my problem if there isn't enough money send our kids to any extra activities, like soccer, instrument lessons, karate, etc.

I feel totally handcuffed. I have held the road that my family is #1, and I try and stay home as much as I can, but I feel horrible when we can't afford to do things, and we struggle on our tight budget every month.

Now, with the company in bankruptcy, there are going to be layoffs (furlough's) as well as a pay cut. I don't make a whole lot, my base is around 36k, but I should make around 50k this year. The pay cut is going to be in the neighborhood of 10-13%. That is going to be significant to us. I still have to feed 5 people. I still have to pay the bills, and and the credit cards that got us through training.

So now there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Our lives are stuck here in limbo, when we though we would be getting free of some of it, we are mired in a bog that won't let us go. We are so tired of just getting by. Tired, of going paycheck to paychek. Tired of never seeing or feeling like we are making any progress. And I am tired of feeling like a failure and that I have let my family down, or lead them down the wrong path. A failure that I have family members holding promissory notes and not able to pay them any money. I am squeezed by the fact that I have to be committed to this career, that I cannot work for a smaller airline, as I couldn't handle the paycut. The other option is to leave the career alltoghether and go back to restaurant management, or something else where I could start off making the same amount of money right away. Right now, I can't see doing that either, because of all the time that it took just to get here, to a job that I really like.

I am leaving on a trip today, I guess I am feeling it.

Thanks for listening.

wow, rough times. Hang in there my friend, there'll be better days. Just so you know my words are not empty, let me tell you our story, which I find so very similar to yours, albeit probably not as serious (although when you're in it, it's always the most serious situation in the world).

When we got our house built in 1999, it was under the assumption that we had two salaries to pay for it, two fairly good, if not huge salaries. Not a big house mind you, but a nice two story house, that maybe was stretching our
budget a little but that we still could afford. Only Andrew was in the picture at the time, but we designed the floorplan of the house with a third bedroom on the second floor of the house. 2004 came and Matthew came with it, in
January. There's a nice government plan in Quebec that allows a mom to take up to a year off work while receiving about 55% or her previous income, so my wife was to go back to work in November or so. As the months were going by, she started dreading going back to work, well not really back to work, but back to doing that work. It was not evolving into what they'd promised her she would be doing. I told her, maybe now was the time to look for something else, relaunch your career, which she did. She found a place where she would start in January, in her field of work, Plastics transformation, where she'd be doing more mould designing and no Quality Assurance, which she was absolutely tired of doing. (she once told me she'd jump off a cliff instead of going back to being a manager in Quality Assurance. I went a bit parano and told her to never ever use this analogy, EVER) Fast forward to January, she starts her new job, with a little pay cut, but that was okay, we were still doing fine. I had to cut on a few of my enjoyments, but kids were not missing of anything and house payments were not that big a hurdle. They decided to let her go in April, after less than three months, telling her they thought she would never be any good in design. She was devastated. She started looking for another job, which she foudn after a month. That new job is where she is now. It involves adjusting and installing plastic moulds, a very physical job in which she works night shifts, for 60% the pay rate she used to work in the job she had before Matthew was born. We're now really stretched. Kids are still not missing anything, but we've cut all entertainment expenses, save for my one buy of a game a year (you now know why I enjoy FM2005 so much, it's my one big expense )

When I say our situation is similar to yours is when I read you say "I am leaving on a trip today, I guess I am feeling it." It's exactly how she felt on Sunday night when she had to go in to work. She'd now realized she probably wouldn't be doing this physical job all her life, but every start of a new week would bring her down more and she'd be irritable all Sunday long, leading to her not enjoying being around the kids as much, until I talked her into consulting her doctor. She was diagnosed with severe depression about three weeks ago and prescribed medications. She's been seeing a psychologist once a week since then and she's feeling better, smilier (is that a word) by the day. We're not all that much better financially, but she keeps looking, with enthusiasm now, instead of dread.

What I mean by my very long story is that, you don't know how, you don't know when, but things will get better.

Best of luck to you...

FM